Field of the Invention
The approach presented here relates to a method for segmenting an occupancy grid for a surroundings model of a driver assistance system for a vehicle, to a corresponding apparatus for segmenting an occupancy grid for a surroundings model of a driver assistance system for a motor vehicle, and to a corresponding computer program product.
Background Information
Modern driver assistance systems conform to a structure and are based on a model of the vehicle surroundings. A surroundings model of this kind can contain, for example, properties of other objects (such as their position) or open-area information. Measurements of a wide variety of sensors present in the vehicle, for example a camera, radar, ultrasound, lidar, etc., can be used to construct a surroundings model.
Grid-based approaches to surroundings modeling are very popular in robotics because they represent an efficient tool for model-free surroundings representation and for sensor data fusion. An occupancy grid subdivides the robot's surroundings into discrete regions (grid cells), occupancy of a grid cell reflecting the degree of occupancy of the corresponding region in the robot's surroundings. Building on experience from robotics, occupancy grids are more and more often being utilized in driver assistance systems.
German Published Patent Application No. 10 2004 007 553 describes a sensing apparatus and safety system for a motor vehicle.
European Published Patent Application No. 1 731 922 discloses a method and an apparatus for identifying open areas in the environment of a motor vehicle.